>Shin Yun-bok aka Hyewon was not always so "innocent."
Quote: J. Scott Burgeson
About the descriptions J. Scott Burgeson posted:
Just wanted to note that this all has extensively
and intensely (!) been discussed in Korean art
magazines and all kind of other media since the
late 1990s. The authenticity of pornographic art
work by famous Chosôn period painters that was
rediscovered in the 1990s, by artists Sin
Yun-bok, Kim Hong-do, and others, was at first
questioned. That, however, was a rather short
discussion, and it was generally accepted that
what can't be true still is true. You may want to
note that these images are much less
sophisticated than, for example, Japanese erotic
images, which is why I call them pornographic --
there is little to no sub-text, other than in
Japanese art of the same period. As was pointed
out by many other writers, these were basically
1:1 copies of Manchu-Chinese art works -- you do
not need to be an art historian to see this. All
that was 'replaced' in these "Koreanizations" are
whatever was left of cloth items and hair styles
in the depicted scenes (Manchu-Chinese
items/fashions now depicted as Korean). During
the colonial period some Korean artists then
again copied these images, as they were
especially popular among Japanese collectors (one
example is Ch'oe U-sôk, well known for his
Tan'gun portrait and his 1929 depiction of
Admiral Yi Sun-sin in Japanese warrior's garb
[sic], also known for the Christian format [e.g.
the triptych] used in his brush-and-ink paintings
that depict Korean heroes of various periods).
The porn industry was always a very lucrative
one. Do we need to know more?
Regards,
Frank
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Frank Hoffmann
http://koreaweb.ws